


Swimming in New York

by DunkMeToHell



Category: Professional Wrestling
Genre: Also i wrote this in one go at 2 am, Character Study, Light Angst, M/M, No Dialogue, Relationship Study, another one that just kind of spins off into longing metaphors, decided to take it out of anonymous bc.......fuck it, rated t just for bein kinda blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 14:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21429400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DunkMeToHell/pseuds/DunkMeToHell
Summary: Enzo just needs to hear Cass breathe. Everything else comes after.
Relationships: Enzo Amore/Colin Cassady
Kudos: 7





	Swimming in New York

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this mostly as a way to sort through some of my own thoughts. I do realize there’s a lot of ways to interpret the exact meaning of this one; I’m honestly not quite sure what the core of it is at points myself, except just maybe me looking too deeply at characters who nobody (but me) pays much mind to lately. 
> 
> “All Over You” by Live is a suitable companion song.

Breathing in, breathing out. 

Breathing in, breathing out. 

He doesn’t need to do this. Tonight isn’t so bad. They’re together, the night is calm and cool and Cass has the blanket pulled up almost to his chin. He’s comfortable, breathing slowly and deeply in sleep. 

But Enzo still presses both hands into Cass’s back, letting them rest there, feeling him breathe. 

This is the only thing left that makes him comfortable. 

Self-induced chaos has become monotony. Enzo rarely goes out anymore, in fact. It’s harder for him to lose himself when he’s already trapped inside his own head, where it’s already too bright, too loud, too searing to care about anymore. 

This is dark, this is quiet. And as much as he will never admit it, he needs silence, he needs to be grounded again. 

Cass is the thing that keeps him grounded. Cass means rest at night, a quiet conversation, staring out across the city that never sleeps as it steals a moment of respite. 

The bay rests beyond the edge of their skyline, the only thing marking separation between New York and New Jersey. They’ve survived divisions deeper than the whole ocean can hold, and they’ve swum a great distance just to be together again—but the shore never comes. They just stay up enough to breathe, but even just surviving is better than drowning. 

Breathing in, breathing out. 

Cass can rest. Enzo can hold him while he treads. He doesn’t need to breathe; he can forget about it, forget himself, forget the world. It’s Cass who needs it most. 

But Enzo can feel himself getting tired. His legs will buckle soon, and he’ll have the choice of whether or not he will sink down like a stone. He can feel it approaching; he can see it in the lines forming in his face, the fading in his eyes. Some days he doesn’t know where he’s been or what to blame it on. 

Under his palms, he feels Cass’s lungs expand, and he too takes a breath in. They’re in sync, and Enzo hopes it stays that way. He never wants to drift away again. 

In a matter of days he’ll have a match again, and there will be bright lights and sound and the ever-present ache in Enzo’s temples that he’s now accepted as part of life. He’ll be leaving Cass alone for the night.

But they’re here in the present, and rumors and talk are distant beneath them when they’re this close. Nothing matters now; it can’t, not when the lights of New York tremble out there like the last dying stars in the sky, and when the bay is so distant, and when there’s so little distance between the two of them that they’re effectively finally merged, finally one unit, finally breathing. It’s all Enzo has ever wanted, and he only holds to some private dream that maybe that’s how Cass feels too. 

(He does, and in a way he always has, more than Enzo could ever know and more than he could ever know how to say. He could try it if they both weren’t always trying to stay afloat, but now that they’re here together he knows there’s no word that will ever be sufficient. But Cass is breathing. That is more than enough.)

Above there are stars—Enzo can’t see them, but they’re out there, hidden from the light and noise and insulated in the darkness. Every dawn that approaches, they seem to collapse and drown in the bay, singed by the rising sun. But the stars renew their light each evening that comes anew. Their presence is certainty; they have lived longer already than New York City will ever exist, and when the last window shuts off for the last time they will still be shining in heaven like a knowing smile, asking “you didn’t know I was here all along?”

Someday Enzo will accept the night, the quiet and rest. He will stop treading and finally float in the bay, watching the stars that never end even after they die. And Cass will be there, and they will be together as they float amongst the flood of things that sought to separate them, and they will breathe. They will never fade.

Enzo will wait out eternity first, if he must; he will live his lifetime out in the bright lights inside his head; he will ignore himself, ignore every word that they ever utter about him and live in sound and fury. But Cass can have night. He needs to breathe. 

(Enzo leans tentatively in and presses his ear just so between Cass’s shoulder blades. His heart is beating, calm and low like the intermittent pulse of a bass drum. Enzo takes a breath in and a breath out, carefully timed until they are again synchronized, again living as one person. This is the only way Enzo sees life fit to live. He allows night to take him in that moment, and he falls deeply asleep that way, between New York Bay and the stars in the sky.)

Breathing in, breathing out. 


End file.
